Beauty By The Numbers

Sell More by Knowing What Beauty Shoppers Really Want

Shoppers are more demanding when it comes to beauty than ever before. They research ingredient stories online. Beauty and review websites, as well as social media, are loaded with product reviews and consumer claims touting what works and what doesn’t.

In short, today’s beauty and personal care consumers pretail before they retail.

It’s not enough to have a unique product; companies must also have stellar, standout claims that tell the story of how consumers find its product superior to others on the market.

With this as a backdrop, The Benchmarking Company’s offering of beauty product testing for 5-star consumer claims has become an imperative part of a brand’s pre-product launch process, often predicting and contributing to product success and importantly, sometimes saving brands from making multimillion dollar mistakes.

“At our core, TBC is a research firm. With custom research services that allow us to have a unique market birds-eye view on the consumers’ beauty desires, influencers and concerns, we’re able to develop unique claims that speak to her on an emotional level,” said Jennifer Stansbury, Co-Founder and Managing Partner.

“This helps brands to capture her mindshare–and–purse through targeted claims that talk to her wants, needs and concerns, legitimizing the benefits of the product tested.” When beauty marketers need to capture and grow consumer mindshare or legitimize marketing claims, they seek The Benchmarking Company, rated best-in-class when beauty brands want to move the needle on product sales.

Claims from consumer beauty product testing, added Jennifer, can help ignite products sales, whether a new launch or a collection has hit a plateau and needs to reignite sales.

“These types of claims are immensely attractive to buyers. They want to know that a product works on women like them—from women like them. That emotional woman-to-woman trust factor is a huge selling point,” added Jennifer.

Perhaps there’s no better validation than real-world anecdotes from Benchmarking Company clients.

When Jill Scalisi was readying her skin care line in 2012, she knew she needed to be able to make strong and authentic statements, especially because of the discerning QVC audience she needed to capture. She sought the expertise of The Benchmarking Company.

“I knew right off the bat I was in the right hands,” said Jill, whose Scalisi Skincare collection recently won QVC’s Beauty Quest Award. “They knew the questions to ask and we received very useful feedback from consumers,” she said. In particular, Jill was able to craft key selling statements to hit upon what consumers wanted in skin care. “They customized the project for us, gave us what we asked for and more,” said Jill, adding she’s a small company that got the same treatment as a large vendor.